1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a flying head employed in a recording disk apparatus such as a hard disk drive (HDD), in particularly, to a flying head slider comprising a slider body supported with respect to the surface of a recording disk and a head element supported on an end surface of the slider body downstream of the air stream running along the slider body during rotation of the recording disk.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A flying magnetic head is employed in for example an HDD so as to change and detect the direction of magnetic field in the surface of a magnetic disk without contacting the magnetic disk. When the magnetic disk rotates in such HDD, air stream running along the surface of the magnetic disk serves to make a head slider of the magnetic head fly over the surface of the magnetic disk. As the flying height of the head slider gets smaller, the head element on the magnetic head approaches more to the surface of the magnetic disk, so that high density recording can be realized.
The magnetic head element in the flying magnetic head is covered with a protection layer as shown in for example Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 9-293223. Accordingly, when the attitude of the head slider changes, the protection layer happens to approach the surface of the recording disk than the magnetic head element. In order to avoid collision of the protection layer against the surface of the disk when the attitude of the head slider changes, an extra margin needs to be incorporated in the flying height of the head slider because excessive approach of the head slider toward the surface of the disk should be taken into account. As a result, the magnetic head element tends to recede from the surface of the disk even when the head slider takes the proper attitude.